Category: Opinion

Musing Mondays: hardback or paperback?

18th October 2010 / / 11 Comments

I saw this question, and it got me thinking:

Do you prefer hardcovers, trade paperbacks (the bigger ones), or mass market paperbacks (the smaller ones)? Why?

Once upon a time, my answer to this would have come readily: mass market paperbacks, because they were cheaper and easier to handle. These days, it’s less clear-cut, as I’ve come to appreciate hardcovers and trade paperbacks more. I won’t deny that books in those bulkier formats are trickier to read; but there’s something about sitting down with a hardback especially that can give reading — well, ‘a sense of occasion’ is the best way I can think of putting it.

Actually, my favourite format of book is not listed in the question — it’s a mid-sized paperback, or smaller cased hardcover, which are less unwieldy whilst retaining that feeling of being special. I guess I appreciate books as artefacts more than I used to, but practicality is nice to have as well.

Talking about female writers

13th October 2010 / / 15 Comments

There’s been an extensive discussion at Torque Control over the last week about the paucity of women currently being published in British science fiction. I want to do my bit to continue that conversation, and I’ll take as my starting point the magazine that popped through my letterbox a couple of days ago.

Black Static is a horror magazine rather than a science fiction one, but the issues of under-representation/lack of visibility of female writers in the genre are much the same. Black Static can usually be relied upon to highlight the work of female writers; indeed, in its last couple of issues, the magazine has published the twenty short-shorts selected by Christopher Fowler and Maura McHugh for their Campaign for Real Fear, and thirteen of those stories were by women.

In that context, it’s particularly disappointing to note that the current issue contains five stories, all of which are by men. Now, I used to think this didn’t matter with individual issues of magazines (see, for example, my review of Jupiter XXIV, where I don’t mention the all-male line-up) – anthologies, yes, because they make an individual statement; but I was less concerned when it came to issues of magazine, because they could be viewed in the wider context of the magazine’s complete run.

These days, however, I am inclined to think differently: any list of writers or stories makes a statement; to exclude women from a list is to imply that they don’t write that sort of fiction – which is an impression I would never want to encourage. It’s vital for readers, authors, editors, and publishers alike to keep an eye out for things like this, to prevent them from happening, and not let them go unremarked when they do slip through the net.

Going back to the current issue of Black Static, there’s an interview with horror editor Stephen Jones which touches on the subject of female writers in the genre. One of Jones’s comments is another sentiment with which I would have agreed readily at one time, though now I have reservations –  that the quality of the story is of paramount importance, rather than its author’s gender (or what-have-you).

I could agree with this wholeheartedly if the playing-field were level, but the playing-field is not level. Historically, more men have been published than women, and the effects of that filter down. I’ve never selected books on the basis of an author’s gender, but my book collection is still weighted heavily towards male authors, and that’s because there have always been proportionately more books by men around from which I could choose.

I’m well aware that the coverage on this blog is also weighted towards male writers, a situation with which I’m not happy. Whilst I may not be able to remove that bias entirely, what I can do is to make sure that I’m looking for and drawing attention to the work of female writers, of whatever genre. I’d urge others to do the same.

Booker genre

28th July 2010 / / 1 Comment

This hasn’t passed without comment, but I wanted to add my own thoughts. In a Guardian article on the Man Booker longlist, Mark Brown notes the lack of genre fiction, and reports the comments of Andrew Motion, chair of the judges: “Motion said they had not consciously set out to exclude genre but stressed that the Man Booker prize was an award for literary fiction and there were plenty of prizes for crime and sci-fi.”

I’d agree with Niall Harrison that this comment doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I’d agree with Cheryl Morgan that it paints ‘literary fiction’ as just another genre. Most of all, though, I think it needlessly cuts people off from good and interesting fiction.

The view expressed by Motion just doesn’t reflect what I see when I look at the fiction being written today. I see literature of quality in all categories of fiction (that’s what I think ‘literary’ should mean). And the boundaries are blurred (I’ll focus here on fantastic fiction, as it’s what I know best): even on the Booker longlist, there are at least four books that seem to be to have been written to some degree with a fantastical sensibility (Donoghue, McCarthy, Mitchell, and Murray).

Look at the Edge Hill Prize for short fiction, which happily reaches across the spectrum – and which, for the past two years, has been awarded to collections with fantastical stories. The Booker is impoverishing itself by not taking a similarly inclusive approach – and, as a result, people are missing a chance to hear about books that may well be of interest to them.

Weekly Geeks: Shiny Book Syndrome

21st July 2010 / / 4 Comments

I’ve decided to try to broaden the focus of this blog out a bit from just the usual reviews. To start with, I’m going to join in with Weekly Geeks, a themed posting challenge for book bloggers. This week’s theme is ‘Shiny Book Syndrome’ – or, as Tara puts it on the site, ‘when a person only wants to read their newest book and leave piles of poor unread books on their shelves to collect dust’. How, she asks, do you keep this at bay?

Well… I know all about this feeling; I’ve been buying books faster than I can read them for upwards of twelve years. It started in the late ‘90s, when, as a teenager, I found a cheap copy of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy in a book sale – and suddenly I was introduced to huge numbers of authors of whom I’d never heard, but now wanted to read. Later the same year, I started reading SFX magazine, whose book pages were my first proper source of news about new releases. A year or so after that, I joined the British Fantasy Society, and became aware of the small press writers associated with that organisation…

And I still have books from that period which I haven’t got around to reading yet.

Of course, the problem has grown over the years, as I come across new books (new to me, that is; even a yellowed second-hand book that’s falling to pieces can be ‘shiny’) and think, ‘Ooh, I’d like to read that’. I’ve managed to fill an entire bookcase in my flat with unread books.

Which is not to mention the books piled in the wardrobe.

Which is not to mention the boxes of books in the lounge.

Which is not to mention all the books which are still in my parents’ house.

You get the picture.

One of the stranger things which has happened over the years with regard to my growing book collection is that my reading tastes have evolved, to the point where I don’t actually want to read some of my unread books, because I’m no longer interested in them. One day, I ought to go through and weed them out, but… well, y’know – there’s always another book to read instead.

How do I keep Shiny Book Syndrome away? I don’t, really. I guess I just trust that the right tinme to read a given book will come and, if it doesn’t, then perhaps it wasn’t worth reading anyway.

Besides, without Shiny Book Syndrome, there couldn’t be those serendipitous moments when you come across a book you’d forgotten you had and think, ‘Yes, that’s just what I want to read next’.

Keeping it fresh

11th July 2010 / / 2 Comments

What does it take to make an old trope feel fresh? I’m prompted to ask this question by the return to British screens of Misfits, which is currently getting a repeat showing on Channel 4 on Saturday nights. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, Misfits is about a group of young offenders who get caught in a storm that grants them (and others) super-powers. The thing is, it’s a much more interesting programme than it sounds; for all that it might seemingly be based on a hackneyed trope, there’s a freshness to it. One reason for this is that, I think, Misfits is determined to stay true to the context of its story.

To explain what I mean, I’ll first take a step back and look at the example of Heroes, another show about ‘ordinary’ people with super-powers (there’s a further similarity in that characters’ abilities were initially related to their personalities and/or circumstances in some way). Heroes was essentially a comic book on the telly, and it came to the television medium with various aspects (both good and bad) of superhero comics – cliffhangers, alternative timelines, and so on. This worked well enough  in season one: the aesthetics were fresh, and I think there were some smart ideas – for example: giving such a visible power as flight to the character who’s the most public figure; giving regeneration to a teenage girl, who’s at probably the only time in her life when such a power would be unwelcome, because it’s a mark of difference. But Heroes went off the boil after that, for a variety of reasons, but including that it got wrapped up in its own continuity and moved too far away from what (I think) made it distinctive. It couldn’t be about ordinary people with remarkable abilities any more, not when some of its characters became so mighty-powered, and not when such extraordinary plots were being hatched.

Misfits strikes me as different. At least in its first season (the second has yet to air), every fantastical happening is filtered through the prism of inner-city teenagers with ASBOs; the idea of ‘super-powers’ is put into the service of a story about that kind of people in that kind of place – and this is what gives the programme its freshness. It’s the same thing that made the ending of Ashes to Ashes satisfy, even though the concept (a purgatory for coppers) wasn’t particularly surprising – it worked because the 1980s, police-procedural aesthetic remained intact throughout.

I’ve seen a similar effect at work in books. There are times I’ve found myself abandoning series of supernatural thriller/detections, because I felt they were relying too much on their built-up continuity to generate drama, instead of the root idea that made them interesting to me in the first place. But, just recently, I read The Radleys by Matt Haig, which is a vampire story with that sense of freshness. And, again, that freshness comes less from the concept – a middle-class family of abstaining vampires trying to get on with life – than the way Haig keeps the theme of ‘middle-class family travails’ at centre-stage, and deploys the vampire trope through that theme.

I’m coming to think that even the most venerable of tropes can be revitalised if integrated thoroughly enough with a particular setting or aesthetic. I wondered if any new takes were possible on the Arthurian mythos; and then, last year, I read Nicky Singer’s Knight Crew, which places aspects of that mythos in a story about feuding street gangs. It’s not fantastical as such, but it uses the significance of Arthurian names and icons for part of its effect, transforming them in the process – and that runs to the very heart of the novel.

This post has tried to put into words some thoughts that I’ve been mulling over for a while. I guess I can sum them up by saying: one way to make a trope fresh is to place it in a different context, and make it serve that context. The results can be interesting.

Lines Drawn in the Air: literary and genre fiction

25th June 2010 / / 5 Comments

Occasioned by the Gaiman/Sarrantonio Stories anthology, David Barnett has written a blog post for the Guardian on ‘literary’ versus ‘genre’ fiction. I can’t help thinking that it’s based on a false opposition. He writes:

The ongoing, endless war between “literary” fiction and “genre” fiction has well-defined lines in the sand. Genre’s foot soldiers think that literary fiction is a collection of meaningless but prettily drawn pictures of the human condition. The literary guard consider genre fiction to be crass, commercial, whizz-bang potboilers. Or so it goes.

Well… Maybe some people do hold views like these, but I struggle to accept it as a generalisation. From my point of view, the kinds of distinctions to which Barnett refers are simply artificial. I’d agree with Aliya Whiteley that all the plot in the world is no guarantee of a good read, not if you don’t care about it; and that that both fast- and slower-paced novels can be worthwhile. I also think that Sam Jordison has it right in his comment on Barnett’s post when he points out that plenty of ‘literary’ fiction tells a good story. And I would disagree with the implication that a page-turner must be plot-driven. We turn the page because we want to know what’s written on the next one; I don’t see that it makes much difference whether what’s written there is a plot point, or a character observation, or whatever.

I define the focus of this blog as ‘literary fiction’, but I deliberately take a broad view of what that term means; some of it would be considered genre, some perhaps not. As far as I’m concerned, no matter what I’m reading, my basic approach doesn’t change: what I want is for a book or story to be the best it can, whatever it’s doing – and I hope that attitude comes through in what I write.

The divide between literary and genre can vanish with a tweak of perception. Consider this post by Larry Nolen, in which he responds to another blog post that identified lack of sf/fantasy authors in the New Yorker’s recent list of 20 American writers aged under 40, and contrasted  that with the  Daily Telegraph’s similar list of British writers.

(I will pause briefly to wonder what definition of ‘British’ led to the inclusion of Paul Murray in the Telegraph’s list, then move on.)

Larry points out, quite rightly, that the New Yorker list does include some authors of fantastic literature; it’s just that their work tends not to appear on the science fiction and fantasy shelves. However, we could go further, and note that China Miéville is the only writer on the Telegraph list who is published as a genre author. All the others on that list who could be considered to have written science fiction or fantasy, from Rana Dasgupta to Scarlett Thomas, are published as mainstream – just like the writers Larry mentions.

If there are lines between literary and genre fiction, I would suggest that they’re not so much drawn in the sand, as drawn in the air – and can be stepped over just as easily.

Sunday Salon: Book reviewer clichés

10th January 2010 / / 9 Comments

This post is about an Examiner.com article by Michelle Kerns on “reviewerspeak” which I came across yesterday through Twitter. It’s a pretty old article, but I’m still going to respond — and I don’t entirely agree with it.

Kerns lists twenty words and phrases which (she says) are overused by reviewers and have simply become stand-ins for any meaningful comment. It’s very easy to use those terms, no doubt — I know I’ve used at least seven in the past, and probably more — and I’ll agree that they can be stifling when deployed in the way they are in Kerns’ sample bad review. None of this, however, stopped me from using one of the terms from the list (“that said”) in the review I was writing at the time.

Why did I deliberately use this term which I’d just seen labelled a cliché? Because it helped me say what I wanted to say. My problem with Kerns’ list is that it treats all those words and expressions as clichés in and of themselves — well, “readable” and “page-turner” maybe, but I’d say that, for the rest, it depends on context. Sometimes a book is gripping; sometimes a scene is poignant — as you long as you make it clear why they are, what’s wrong with saying so?

As for “that said”, I think it’s a perfectly good way to link together two contrasting points, as long as you stand equally by both of them (e.g. in my last review, I wanted to say that I enjoyed the novel, even though I felt disadvantaged by not knowing the back-story). If, on the other hand, it’s used (per Kerns’ example) as a way of watering down a firm opinion, then yes, that’s a bad thing. As I say, it all depends on context.

Question: what do you think of that list? Do you think there are any words or phrases that are so tired, a reviewer just shouldn’t use them?

600+ pages…

24th September 2009 / / 5 Comments

Yesterday on Twitter, Matt from Penguin General Marketing asked, ‘Why is 600+ pages so off putting to a literary fiction reader, but not at all to [a] mass market reader?’ I’ve been on both sides of that particular fence and, though I’m uncomfortable with the sharp distinction Matt makes, I’ll take his question at face value and try to answer it.

(Please note: this is going to involve some generalisation and stereotyping, as I try to put people in neat little boxes where they don’t really fit. It’s not my intention to offend anyone’s sensibilities; I apologise in advance if I do.)

So: why would there be different attitudes to a large page-count? Essentially, I think it’s because we’re talking about two different groups of readers who are looking for different things from their books, one of which is facilitated by such a page-count, whilst the other of which may not be.

I would say that, for the kind of mass-market reader to whom Matt refers, ‘more is more’. There was a time when one of the main criteria by which I judged whether to buy a book was its length: longer books, to my mind, represented greater value for money. Of course, this is a very crude way of assessing a book’s worth; and, though we may still balk just a little at the thought of paying £7.99 for a 150-page book (I know I did a few months ago – though I bought the book in question nonetheless), I think that, as book-lovers of any sort, we move on from that attitude pretty quickly.

But there’s another attitude, or cluster of attitudes, that has more to do with what’s actually in a book. What is most satisfying for our hypothetical mass-market reader is the ongoing experience of reading, which may transcend individual books. If you’ve ever welcomed a new volume in a series because it was the chance to return to the lives of a set of favourite characters, or a new novel by a favourite author who writes a specific ‘type’ of fiction (be it medical thriller, wartime saga, epic fantasy, or whatever), you will have experienced the feeling I’m talking about. Under this view, a lengthy page-count prolongs the reading experience, which is why it’s so welcome.

For our hypothetical literary reader, however, what is most satisfying is the specific experience of reading each individual novel. Such readers are more likely to be concerned with the craft of the whole as a distinct piece of work, to ask how well different aspects work in each particular case – to ask of a 600-page book, ‘Did this novel justify its 600 pages?’ Often, the answer is ‘no’, simply because, the longer a novel is, the more room it has to slip up, and the harder it has to work to make its pages really count. That’s why a 600-page book might make a literary reader’s heart sink: the very real possibility that it would have been a better piece of work at half its length.

Of course, there is all manner of overlap between the two categories I’ve just described. Mass-market readers appreciate individual pieces of work, literary readers return to favourite authors because their books have signature characteristics, and so on. But I think there’s something in that basic distinction.

To sum up my answer to Matt’s original question in one sentence: broadly speaking, it’s because, for one group of readers, the 600+ page-count must be justified by the book itself; for the other group, the page-count is its own justification.

Link: Jeff VanderMeer on genre ‘culture wars’

30th August 2009 / / 0 Comments

Just wanted to share this insightful post by Jeff VanderMeer, in which he argues against drawing lines in the sand between ‘genre’ and ‘literature’. An extract:

I just want smart and savvy and, yeah, I veer between wanting simple and wanting complex, of loving and appreciating a novel that gives me traditional pleasures and then loving and appreciating a novel that has no interest in giving me those traditional pleasures but something else just as pleasurable instead (to avoid using false oppositions like “entertainment versus literary”) and there’s nothing pretentious or pulpish about that.

I would tend to agree with that.

The long and the short of reading and blogging

11th August 2009 / / 0 Comments

Thoughts on a couple of links I have come across:

First, Jeff Sparrow at Overland asks whether the internet has affected one’s ‘ability to enjoy literary fiction — or indeed any long books that require prolonged concentration’. It’s a difficult question for me to answer, because I became a serious reader at about the same time I gained regular access to the internet. To be clear: I have been a reader all my life; but I didn’t have the opportunity or inclination to read as widely as I now do until I started university, which was also when the internet became part of my life. There is no neat ‘before’ and ‘after’ for me to compare.

Still: it is true that the most intense periods of reading in my life (the summer before I started university, and vacation periods before we got an internet connection at home) were times when I didn’t have internet access. It is true that the internet has become part of my daily routine, such that I go online pretty much every day, but I don’t read a book every day. It is true that sometimes I find it difficult to just sit down and read a book, but that’s not because of the internet – I have a lot of hobbies, and not enough time to do them all to the extent I’d like; so there’s often a thought (irrational, I know) in the back of my mind about all the other things I could be doing.

And there have been plus points. I am undoubtedly a better reader because of the internet. Reading other people’s reviews and having the opportunity to write my own both encouraged me to think more deeply about what I read. It’s still happening: this year, for the first time, I’ve written in depth about whatever books I felt like; and this too has made me appreciate them better. Add to this the opportunities the internet brings to share thoughts with other readers – and, yes, to communicate with writers – and I must conclude that the internet has enriched my life as a reader.

The most important thing for me, though, is that, when I do sit down to read, I can still read at the speed and level of concentration that I always could. It’s true that I have less time for reading than I used to – but that because I’m not a student any more, and has nothing to do with the internet. 

That article led me to this post by a blogger called ‘Ariel’. Most readers, another blogger told her, won’t read posts of more than a few paragraphs, if that. Ariel’s post is a defence of blogging at length.

Now, there may be some truth in the idea that many online readers prefer short posts. When I look at my blog stats, I am constantly surprised at how often (not always, but often) people arrive here having apparently searched for information on a book or film I reviewed externally, then read my short post linking to the review – but don’t click through to the review itself. I suppose it’s possible that these visitors may have already read the review and then find this blog while continuing their searches; but it’s more likely, I suspect, that they want a quick thumbs-up or thumbs-down to aid with a buying decision. Which they’re perfectly entitled to want; but, as Ariel suggests, the possibilities of the online medium allow for so much more.

My posts, of course, tend to be quite long (though not nearly as long as some). True, the music posts are usually pretty short; but 800 words is not uncommon for the rest (my last book review was nearly 1,300 words, and the longest of all nearly 2,500 – but these were unusual for me). Furthermore, I don’t make concessions to ‘reading at a glance’: no cuts, no summary sections, no star ratings – you just get the full review.

I do this partly because that’s the way I think reviews should be written and appreciated; but also because I think the medium supports it. In my experience, there’s something about ‘journalism’ as a form of writing (I use the term here as a broad umbrella for non-academic styles of non-fiction writing) that makes it quite easy to read on screen. Unlike fiction or academic writing, this kind of writing is pretty close to someone talking to you in prose form; and I think that makes it easier to digest quite lengthy pieces.

Of course, not everybody wants to read long, discursive articles; but not everybody wants to read about the subjects on which I blog, either – and I have a feeling that the people who do want to read about those subjects will be happy to read posts about them that go into some depth. They might even prefer that to very short posts. So: yes, agreed, many people may not read long blog posts – but some will; and it’s never a waste of time to write at length if the people who read what you’ve written get something out of it.

How about you, reader? Now you’ve read my 850 words on these subjects, what do you think?

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